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THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS

Friday, February 22 nd, 2019 at 00:02 am

THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS

THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS – Theater Review

SYNOPSIS

The Nora Theatre Company stages Rambo’s riotous and touching play about everyone’s favorite advice columnist. Over the course of a long night in 1975 Chicago, “the lady with all the answers” for others grapples with a dilemma of her own. While revisiting favorite columns on such topics as nude housekeeping and the correct way to hang toilet paper, Ann composes the most important letter of her life.

Pick of the Week!

JOY’S REVIEW

THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS stars the marvelous Judith Ivey down at the Cherry Lane Theatre and looks at basically about a 12 hour period and the life of the woman that we came to know as Anne Landers. It’s a one woman show. It’s in two acts which probably would have been better served by being 90 minutes and looks at a fascinating woman, who, for many years was one of the 10 most admired women in America. Most people know the story that she has a twin sister who became Dear Abby and that her take on American life really gave the space for people to admit that everything was not cheerful and happy during the Eisenhower era and that people had problems and she didn’t pretend to be an expert on anything other than getting other experts to respond. She wasn’t a psychologist. Didn’t pretend to be. The lady with all the answers was not so much that she had the answers but she had access to people who had the answers. Judith is wonderful in it. You absolutely believe that she is Anne Landers. The problem is really the material let’s her down a little bit. As I said, it would have been much better served as a 90 minute without the break for a costume change. We actually didn’t need to give her time to take a bath and it would’ve moved along more quickly. The problem is that hearing who she was and how she responded to the great crisis of her life, which is her husband’s leaving her. Of being a staunch advocate of staying married no matter what, is literally a crisis. But I think it would have been served in a shorter period of time but Judith Ivey was single and fabulous. So three stars.JOY METER★★★★★